Customer Reviews

After the Plague

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read one of his stories in the New Yorker, liked it, and got this book out of the library. Most of the characters are in their 50's. Their lives aren't working. Something bad happens. I like the writing very much. I don't know what literature is. I know what fun is. Reading these stories is fun.

I'm about the same age as most of the characters. Boyle writes the way it is, when you know at least half of your life is over and your abilities are declining. I'm happier than most of his characters, but what he writes rings true.

I've read several of T.C. Boyle's novels and another of his story collections; I liked all of them but this one appealed to me the most. His writing is engaging and funny, at times wickedly so, as he takes us along the often dark and always conflicted edges of America in the late 1990s (the book was published in 2001). He tries hard and usually succeeds in getting us into his subjects' heads, so that we can see how they become capable of extreme and often dysfunctional actions (She Wasn't Soft and Friendly Skies are good examples). The things that wear us down: slights, humiliations and disappointments; these come up against expectations and hopes and play out in obscure byways of our culture (Mexico; Achates McNeil; Termination Dust; Death of the Cool). The characters in these stories are not unlikeable, and some adapt well to extreme circumstances (After the Plague; The Black and White Sisters); others are portrayed with tenderness (The Underground Gardens; My Widow; Rust), and all are very human. Apparently (see the two other reviews) T.C. Boyle isn't for everyone, but I feel he is an inventive, insightful writer who is skilled in his craft. Definitely worth reading!

This is my first TC Boyle book, and probably my last. The stories in this collection are so depressing and filled with the most disturbing characters that I can't imagine reading anything else by him. He has a nasty habit of ending his stories at a point that does not always bring some conclusion. Maybe that's what's supposed to make him such an 'artiste', but I just find it unsettling.

There is nothing redeeming or redemptive of his characters, they are all self-centered to the point of boredom and narcissism. But everyone has some quirky author they like and he must be that for a lot of people.